Fortune's Wheel
by Rayet
Summary: Jareth has no power over Sarah, and so he has no power over her fate. Jareth does not like this.


_Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl whose stepmother always made her stay home with the baby. And the baby was a spoiled child, and wanted everything for himself, and the young girl was practically a slave. But what no one knew is that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and he had given her certain powers. So one night, when the baby had been particularly cruel to her, she called on the goblins for help! "Say your right words," the goblins said…_

"I have reordered time, I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for _you!_ I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me. Isn't that generous?"

It was true, he had done that. He remembered that time like it was yesterday. It could have been yesterday if he wanted it to be; because Jareth the Goblin King had a great mastery of time.

He just didn't have that much respect for it.

And that was why he was alone; because he had seen _his _dreams in the crystal. He had seen the future he could have had, and he had wanted it

Jareth had very little respect for time. He stopped it when it annoyed him, took hours from the day when it bored him, reordered it when it suited him. He could see the time that had not yet passed just by gazing into his crystal. One day, on the day a seemingly ordinary human child was born, the crystal presented him with a future that promised to change his lonely existence for ever. It was a simple image; there he was, dancing as he had done so often. But this time he danced with a mortal woman, and mortals were _never _present at goblin balls. Yet there she was, in his arms as they waltzed around the crystal. She was a beautiful, dark-haired lady that seemed to be future-Jareth's whole world. The Jareth of the past had watched this image and wanted for nothing else.

But Jareth had little respect for time, and so time did not always do his bidding…

_Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl whose stepmother always made her stay home with the baby. And the baby was a spoiled child, and wanted everything for himself, and the young girl was practically a slave. But what no one knew is that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and he had given her certain powers. So one night, when the baby had been particularly cruel to her, she called on the goblins for help! "Say your right words," the goblins said…_

He remembered seeing her when she was younger, remembered giving her the power to call on him one day. He found he had trouble waiting for this finite little human to grow up, and had first visited her when she was only a babe. He knelt in front of her, his wild blond mane glowing from the little nightlight, as he whispered the right words to baby Sarah. There had been no fear of the strange man in her room as she stared into his mismatched eyes. Though barely a child, those words would still embed themselves in her subconscious; his name would rest on the tip of her tongue for many years. Jareth had considered snatching her from her crib that very night, but something had told him it would be better for the girl to stay where she was for the time being. Plus, her mother had come in to check on her and nearly impaled the strange man with a toy horse-on-a-stick.

"Do not be afraid; I am a guardian angel," Jareth had told her, thinking fast and using his most kingly voice.

Mrs Williams had never heard of guardian angels wearing riding boots and sparkly vests, and so had done what any mother would have done to a man with hair like _that _in her daughter's room in the middle of the night.

Jareth had been lucky to get away intact.

But what little he had done for Sarah had proven too much. She had used those wishing words far too soon in her tiny life. So he had taken the baby and told her to forget the whole thing and wait a few years. But Jareth had been impatient, and when she'd refused, he allowed it to play out to the end. He had been too arrogant to think the girl of his dreams would ever refuse him, even if they were a few years earlier than he'd seen them. Why would she say 'no' when he had seen them together? Just to make sure, he had given her that peach so she could see what he did. She could live the crystal vision too, and then she would see that they were fated to be. When they had danced, he had not seen the confused teenager that had stumbled into the labyrinth. He had only seen the young lady she would one day become. Everything seemed perfect in his eyes, and still she broke away. Still he ran from him, and saw only her baby brother in peril. Still she had refused him.

That had hurt more than he could say. He had shown her the crystal too; had she not seen the same happy ending as he? Had she not wanted it too? But it seemed she had not. She rejected whatever she had seen, and shattered his crystal dreams too. For the future that had seemed so inevitable was now in flux. He could not see it anymore, and he wasn't sure if he had changed events so much that it was irretrievable.


End file.
